


e M [p] T y

by moonlitserenades



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Banter, Friendship, Gen, Spoilers, am i doing a chapter for every character? maybe, eventually they'll all be here, there's a fair amount of cursing in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:15:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26827978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonlitserenades/pseuds/moonlitserenades
Summary: Molly. Holy shit, right?(Or: In which Molly and the Nein learn how to be together again.)
Kudos: 42





	1. Beau

**Author's Note:**

> Look. I just want him BACK.

“You have a tattoo now,” Molly’s voice is wondering, impressed. He traces one finger lightly across the design on Beau’s back. 

“Yeah, I uh, I used your tarot cards to design it, actually.” 

“I thought so,” he exclaims, clearly delighted. “I’m...pretty honored, actually.” 

“Well, I mean, that was kind of the idea,” she mutters. “Whatever, don’t make it a thing.” 

“Naturally,” he laughs, stepping up beside her and dropping sinuously onto the stool beside her “I gotta get another one. Celebrate the fact that I’m apparently back again.” 

“Our guy’s pretty good,” she offers. “We can take you to him if you want.” 

“Yeah, okay. Sounds fun.” He balances his elbows on the edge of the bar, leaning his chin on interlaced fingertips.

She lets him sit there in silence for a minute, then ventures, “Hey, Molly?”

“Hey Beau?”

“Are you, like...okay?” 

“...yeah. Yeah.”

“Okay, cool, but I kind of feel like you’re talking yourself into that a little bit.” 

He snorts. “Did I fucking ask?” There’s no ire in it, so she just slugs him lightly on the shoulder and waits. “I am okay,” he says, eventually. “It’s weird though, trying to hold three lives in my head. I almost liked it better when I couldn’t remember the first one.” 

She blinks. “Three?”

“Well, I mean.” He lifts his head off his hands, gestures vaguely with one. “I don’t know what’s going on with this one yet.” 

“Yeah.” Beau drains the last of her ale. Stares off into space. “We, uh...it was a little rough for a bit there, before you remembered us.” 

“Yeah, no, that’s fair.” He sighs, upending his own tankard. “I don’t know what happened there.”

“Can I ask you something?”

He shoots her an unimpressed look. “Why stop now?” 

She rolls her eyes, shoving him gently. “Fuck you.” 

“What do you _want?_ ” 

They’re both grinning now, the sharp-tongued banter welcome after all these months of uncertainty. “Okay, don’t be a dick about it.” 

“Never.” He grins, loose and lazy, but tension crawls up his spine. She’s looking uncharacteristically anxious, and it bothers him more than he’ll ever admit to her.

“Do you still want to be with us? I mean, I know Cree’s the one who, you know.” She stares down at the bar, dragging her fingernail along a deep groove in the wood. “But we would’ve done it if we could, we just didn’t know how, and Jester was gone, and we were fuckin’ helpless. It sucked.”

 _Oh._ He turns toward her. He and Beau have never been particularly touchy, but what he can do for her now is make sure she knows he means what he’s saying. “I like Cree,” he says. “And when I first woke up again, I liked being Lucien. But that was because I didn’t remember…” he trails off, shaking his head. It’s fucking _weird_ talking about himself like this. “...being Molly. I prefer this me, and part of being this me is being around you idiots.” 

“I’m weirdly, like, touched by that, I’m gonna be honest,” she says, sniffing.

“You should be,” he drawls. It’s not quite the same; still feels a little off somehow. He takes a breath. “My turn.”

“Yeah, what?” 

He considers, then shakes his head, suppressing a grimace. There’s no way to ask it that isn’t unbearably needy, and that’s something he can’t bring himself to do. “Never mind.” 

She narrows her eyes. “Dude. You can’t just fuckin’ do that.” 

“And yet, I am.” 

She pulls a face. “Whatever, be an asshole.”

“Always,” he chirps, getting up off the stool again. He reaches out and ruffles her hair, making her squawk in protest. “Anyway, I’m going to bed, see you in the morning, I guess.” 

He’s halfway to the stairs when she speaks again. “Molly.”

“Hmm?”

“We’re glad you’re here.”

Something in his chest releases. “Me, too.”


	2. Jester

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Jester,” he says, trying and failing to sound anything other than helplessly amused. “Is that one just a bunch of dicks?”

“Oh my _gosh!_ Molly! Molly, Molly!”

“ _Yes,_ darling?” He turns toward Jester, whose tail is swishing back and forth as she bounces on the balls of her feet. It makes him grin despite himself. 

“Do you know what I _just. Realized_?”

“No, but now I’m really excited to find out.”

“I! Still have! Your tarot cards!” She springs up to sit beside him, digging around in her bag and still chatting away all the while. “I totally wanted to learn how to read them and tell people’s fortunes and stuff, so I went to the library with Beau, and do you know what I found out?”

“I do not,” he says, instead of the instinctive _that tarot cards are bullshit_ that very nearly escapes. He’d remembered the deck, vaguely--had considered trying to find out what had happened to it. But it seems less important to him, now. A trait lingering from Lucien or Nonagon or both, not that he’ll tell her that. She seems so thrilled, he doesn’t want to take that from her. 

“You made your cards!” she exclaims. “Why didn’t you tell us? That’s so cool!”

“Oh.” He blinks. Chooses the option most likely to entertain her: “Didn’t want to spoil the experience.”

“Molly, that’s so silly,” she says, even as she’s clearly delighted. “It makes them even more awesome!” She finally manages to fish them out, triumphantly. He notices with a twinge that she’s managed to keep the bag he’d carried them in, and that she’s tied it off with a bit of bright purple ribbon.

“You’ve taken good care of them,” he says lightly, and she grins.

“Of course I did! Oh. But also, um, I kind of started drawing on some of the blank ones, because I wanted to finish the deck for you. Is that okay?”

“Of course,” he replies, pleased to find that he means it. “They’re yours now.”

“Oh.” Her face crumples just a little. “Are--are you sure? You loved them so much.”

He furrows his brow, tilting his head as he watches her. “Why does that worry you?”

“It doesn’t,” she says, but she’s picking at the ribbon and looking down at her lap.

“Sweetheart, you’re projecting,” he says, nudging her foot gently with his own. The endearment comes without him quite meaning to say it, and it makes her look up at him again.

“Maybe I’m just being silly,” she mutters.

“Can’t know for sure unless you tell me what’s going on over there,” he says, continuing to kick at her playfully.

She exhales a laugh, letting her legs tangle with his. “I don’t know. I keep worrying that you’re going to leave again, or...or forget us again, I guess.”

“I mean,” he says, “that’s...fair, and also not impossible. But if I have to leave again, I’m going to come back to you all. I think we can say that for sure, now.”

“Okay,” she says, very quietly. “Will you teach me how to read them, though?”

And honestly, the idea of Jester, chaotic as she is, learning to snow people with tarot cards fills Molly with such instant glee that there’s only one answer to that question. 

“God,” he says. “Of course. C’mere, come closer.”

Beaming, she scoots over, carefully untying the ribbon and sending the cards cascading across the surface of the bar.

He may not be quite as attached to them as he once was, but still, it tugs at his heartstrings to see them again. Their worn edges, their carefully inked drawings. He reaches for them, his fingers gliding familiarly over them. A laugh bubbles up and out of his mouth each time he spots one that she’s clearly designed. “Jester,” he says, trying and failing to sound anything other than helplessly amused. “Is that one just a bunch of dicks?”

“Um, yes.” She grins, half guilty, half pleased with herself. “Nott got me new blank ones, though, I didn’t use one of yours for that.”

“Oh, I’m not complaining.” He picks it up, surveying it carefully. “These are _very_ impressively drawn, actually.”

Preening, she beams at him. “Thank you! I thought so.”

“So if I pulled this, what would you tell me it meant?”

“It would mean you were going to have a _very sexy night_ very soon.”

He cackles, throwing an arm around her shoulders. “Ohhh, you’ve just invented my new favorite card.”

“Okay, but is there a sexytimes card? Like, an actual one?” She’s smiling widely enough to reveal her pointed eyeteeth. Still laughing, he scoots even closer.

“I am so excited for you to learn about these.”

(This is how the rest of the Nein find them, some hours later: giggling and pouring over the deck, all else entirely forgotten.)


End file.
